For just $148 US the AMD Phenom X3 8450 is an impressive processor that offers an exceptional level of performance. However the new Core 2 Duo E7200 is an amazing processor at just $135 US, offering an unmatched level of performance in almost all applications. Although the Phenom X3 8450 was able to demonstrate its true power in a few applications, such as WinRAR for example, for the most part we found it to be inferior to the E7200 in terms of performance.